


counting bottles

by renecdote



Series: hc_bingo 2019 [3]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Alcoholism, Angst, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nate is a mess, Protective Eliot, Self-Loathing, Substance Addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 11:36:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20994167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renecdote/pseuds/renecdote
Summary: “That stuff’ll kill you, y’know.”Nate, Eliot, and a conversation at the bar.





	counting bottles

**Author's Note:**

> Is this a character study or a fic? Who knows ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> Written for the 'substance addiction' square on my hurt/comfort bingo card. This one is also a late (and metaphorical) fill for whumptober day four: human shield.

“That stuff’ll kill you, y’know.”

Nate looks sidelong down the bar. A familiar slouched figure visible now that the man on the stool between them has stumbled out the door. 

“More importantly,” Eliot continues, still talking to his beer, “that stuff will kill _us_ if you don’t get a handle on it.”

Nate throws back the last of his drink. Irritation licks beneath his skin—or maybe that’s just the burn of cheap whiskey. “I’ve got it under control,”he says.

“My job is to protect them.” Eliot turns his head, looks right into Nate’s glassy eyes. “When I took this job, I didn’t realise I’d be protecting them from you as well.”

That might sting, if anything could get through the fog of alcohol numbing him. Hell, Eliot could punch him right now and he probably wouldn’t feel it. Just wake up the next morning with a blossoming bruise, almost as ugly as the damage to his soul, but more easily drowned out by another bottle.

“You don’t have to stick around.”

Eliot laughs. The kind of laugh that tells you just how humourless a situation is. “I really think I do.”

Nate throws a handful of crumpled bills on the bar and stands, bracing himself against the stool when the world wobbles. He thinks about emptying out the rest of his wallet and taking another bottle upstairs with him, but he thinks that might involve math. Or catching the bartender's attention. Or… or something. It’s all a bit fuzzy. 

Doesn’t matter, there’s sure to be a bottle of something in his apartment if he gets up there and finds he still can’t sleep. Or finds that he can, but not deep enough to stop the dreams from coming.

Eliot is watching him, but he hasn’t moved as if to help. Nate is grateful for that, at least. It helps him sure up those boundaries between them, the walls his team (“your _family,_” Sophie whispers in his head) keep trying so hard to tear down.

Or maybe—maybe they’re not trying. Maybe they’re just decent people, acting decent, and Nate has just been drowning so long he can’t remember what that feels like. Maybe it’s all Eliot says—they’re just trying to make him take care of himself before it kills them. Sophie had said something like that too—how many jobs ago now?—about Nate getting them all killed. So maybe that is all they’re really worried about.

Maybe they’re right to worry.Sometimes he can’t tell anymore, whether it’s him who is really poison, whether he’s just masking it with the different kind of poison he pumps through his veins. 

If a snake bites itself, he wonders, does it die?

Nate sighs. “Go home, Eliot,” he says. 

It’s meant to be an order, a rebuff, but it just comes out tired. As tired as Nate feels, right down to his bones. 

Eliot turns away, back to his beer. Nate watches him swallow and thinks about all the ways he could call the hitter a hypocrite. Lecturing him when he’s sitting there with a drink of his own. Acting all high and mighty like—like he’s never let them down on a job. Like he’s not drowning in his own sea of bad habits. Nate knows what’s hiding beneath the fingerless gloves he’s wearing. Knows there are cuts and bruises there that didn’t come from their last con. 

But Nate swallows the words that taste as bitter as cheap booze going down. He’s not so far gone that he doesn’t know picking a fight with Eliot Spencer can only end badly for himself. And he’s not so far gone he can’t beat himself up well enough on his own. 

Nate pushes away from the bar and wavers between empty tables and chairs toward the back. He pauses in the door, sizing up the stairs. Now would be the time, he thinks, if Eliot was going to pop the prickly bubble of personal space Nate keeps around himself. Beat through the wall like isn’t even there and drag Nate up the stairs, leave him to pass out on his couch while he starts banging open cupboards and pouring whiskey down the drain.

When Nate casts one last look over his shoulder though, eyes tracking a beat behind the movement of his head, all the barstools are empty. Eliot is gone, foam around the edge of an empty glass the only sign that he was ever then. 

Nate sighs and doesn’t care. It’s what he wanted, after all. Eliot can do whatever he feels he needs to do to look out for the others, but Nate doesn’t need the hitter to protect him from himself. He’s an adult. He can make his own bad choices and suffer through the consequences. So he grabs the bannister and steps forward to tackle the dizzying stairs.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr is [here](https://renecdote.tumblr.com/)


End file.
